


Lullaby on The Battlements

by Star_Nymph



Series: To The Moon and Back [9]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Asperger Inquisitor, Asperger Syndrome, F/M, Fluff, PTSD mentioned, Singing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-10
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2019-05-05 01:17:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14606010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star_Nymph/pseuds/Star_Nymph
Summary: After the incident at Adamant, the Commander finds an unusual sight on the battlements: the Inquisitor singing to herself.





	Lullaby on The Battlements

**Author's Note:**

> This part of a bunch of short fics/drabbles I've kept on my tumblr and haven't put on here. Sorry if I'm spamming ya'll, it'll be over soon. The songs used here by the way are Rosemary's Lullaby (that's the tone Eurydice's humming and how I imagine her voice) and 'She Walks Through the Fair'.
> 
> If you have any comments or helpful tips please feel free to write something. I’ll definitely appreciate the feedback! Thank you for reading!

_“…la…la la la la…la lalalala…”_

He thought…he didn’t know what he thought it was at first. The wind, possibly, or it could have been the creaks in the wood when he paced back and forth, eyes heavy on the reports in his hands and straining in the candlelight. It was insistent, whatever it was, soft enough for him to ignore it, vaguely aware of its existent—but it persisted, you see, and soon enough Cullen realized that it was no random act of nature or whining of the floor. It had a pattern and a meaning behind it.

He paused and lifted his gaze from the papers to the ceiling, listening carefully against the howling of the wind through his window.

_“…lalalala laaaa…la la la…lalala la la…”_

It sounded like…singing? 

Cullen furrowed his eyebrows and frowned. Yes,  _singing_. It was low, brittle, as the sound struggled to meet with the severity of the wind—or was trying to hide under its cover, eaten away by its screech. It was a strange little tune; off-key, wandering about as if the singer didn’t know where the melody was going, and it was sad. No, not  _sad_. Aching. It made his heart  _ache_  and he couldn’t begin to conceive why.

Best to ignore it, he thought. Leave it be, it must be coming from the tavern. Someone might be drunk off the recent victory at Adamant Fortress and enjoying themselves too much. It was not his job to reprimand people for singing, even if it somehow managed to echo through to his office and into his brain.

He shook his head and scratched his quill across the bottom of one report. He put it down and began to read the page underneath it.

The next instant, the papers were on the desk and he was breathing in the rush of cold air through his nose as he opened the door to his right. The battlements were shrouded in the night’s shadows as he walked out and followed the trail of the cracking voice. He didn’t know what he expected, truly. A servant girl, maybe, off for the night or working away. What was he going to say? Or do? Tell them to stop? And—why? Because the song bothered him so, wormed its way into his muscles and chest, playing with the strings of his heart, making him think of—he didn’t know. A familiar pain?

 _“…la…la…lalala…la…_ ”

He didn’t know what he expected but it startled him, nevertheless, to realize it was the  _Inquisitor_  singing.

It would have been easy to miss her if she hadn’t shifted just so. She was perfectly situated in one of the crenels, her back pressed straight against one of the crumbling merlon’s and her legs curled up against the opposite. Her head was inclined towards the mountains, hair knotted between her fingers, but he  _knew_  it was her who was singing. He’d know her voice anywhere now; it had somehow weaved itself into his mind, visiting him during the rare nights when the Maker saw fit to spare him another demon infested terror. Shameless as it is, he had memorized how her voice wavered, how it held, how she sighed, and tsked.

Never, though, never had he heard her sing before—or her attempt to, as he noticed she was rather inept at it. Terrible, if he was being unkind. It became shrill as she struggled to hit her own notes and quivered in its lack of strength and confidence. If he was being honest, she sounded like an untoned lute trying to find the right adjustment before one of the strings decided to snap altogether.

But Cullen didn’t find it unpleasant or painful. He didn’t want to stop listening. There was something about it he liked. In all its wobbly faults, there was a sweet and earnest nature to it. It made him yearn for more.

“What are you singing?”

_Maker damn you to the void, Rutherford._

Cullen regretted the question as soon as the words tumbled out of his mouth. Eurydice cut herself off in an instant, her shoulders jerking up, and she spun her head toward him with wide eyes. It was as if he had caught her red-handed in the midst of some shameful crime or taboo—and maybe to her, he had. The elf clumsily scrambled to her feet, tripping over her awkward limbs and her long skirt as she tried to escape.

“W-wait! Maker, please  _wait_.” Cullen called out and, to his surprise, she  _did_ stop but she held herself defensively, ready to bolt at a moment’s notice. “Inquisitor, forgive me. I didn’t mean to—er—interrupt you I was only—I heard s-singing and I thought—” He swallowed and scratched the back of his neck, fumbling over his thoughts and words, unsure of what he was even trying to say or to assure her of. His ears burned when he said, “It…it was nice…whatever you were singing. The melody…”

He could feel her eyes on him, peeling away at his skin, trying to make sense of him as she always did. Her head bowed toward the floor, “It was nothing.”

“It wasn’t nothing…it—it was…”

“No. I mean it was  _nothing_.” She repeated herself and slowly sat back down. “I do not know many songs…I made it up…Made up to fill my head. To think of  _other_  things.” She tapped her forehead and turned her attention back to the mountains. “I do _not_  want to think of Shroud any more…He won’t leave me be.”

Cullen felt that ache again in the center of his chest. The campaign at Adamant had tested all their resolves, but none as much as the Inquisitor’s who clawed her out of the fade with Hawke by her side and was asked to judge the fate an entire fraction of people. The bits and pieces he had managed to find were from the likes of Varric and Hawke—Eurydice, cryptic and dismissive, had vanished the second they had deemed her free to. It had taken her a week to appear once again in Skyhold and harder still for the Commander to get to her to recite what she had seen.

It occurred to him that it might have bothered her—but for her to be haunted by it, followed by the ghost of the man who asked her to pick between his life or another, tormented by herself under that stoic and indifferent stone façade she wore—he didn’t expect that or, rather, he didn’t want her to.

Suffering alone is a task he knew all too well but he wished he could have spared her from it.

Cullen licked his lips and took a cautious step closer to her, “Inquisitor, if you are troubled, I can listen. You only need to say the word…”

“ _No_.” She bit out and that hurt him more than he thought it would or had any right to. “I do not want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it. I want it to stop.” She looked between the battlement’s wall and the floor at Cullen’s feet, then drew her feet under her again and asked, “Will you sit? I would like you to sit.”

She pointed to the crenel next to her. Rubbing his neck, Cullen faltered in doing as she asked, afraid as he was that he was intruding upon her and that he was unwanted. But he went and sat down gingerly, feeling his heart flutter in his chest when she looked at him.

He breathed out, his nerves getting the best of him. “You…said that you didn’t know any songs? Do the Dalish not have their own ballads?”

“We do…many. But they change…there are too many. Or I cannot remember them. Or I did not listen very well.” Eurydice shrugged her shoulders and played with the ends of her hair strands, “Do you know any songs? You should sing one. I heard you sing once.”

“Er…I…” Maker, thank the night for covering his face, he was sure to be as flush as a rose. It was no secret that he had sung with the rest after the fall of Haven, caught up in the Mother Giselle’s rally cry and the hope that they—that Eurydice—were the dawn at the end of the long night. It wasn’t as if he was shy about it; singing was a required practice, good or bad, when learning the Chant. He had spent many nights singing with the rest of his peers, watching the candle burn down, hoping his voice would be carried to the Maker’s ear.

So, why was he suddenly bashful at the notion of her witnessing his song? What was it about the Inquisitor asking for something so simple that made him want to run to his office and lock his voice away in a chest no one could find?

She made him feel unguarded—as if he were stripped raw and she could see his every vein, every muscle, bone, and organ and was free to take each one into her hand and keep it. He wasn’t sure yet if he wanted her to ever to have that sort of power over him.

Then, he dared a glance at her and suddenly the idea of her under his skin didn’t seem so bad.

“I doubt the Chant would be very thrilling. It is very long and quite daunting for some—and I don’t have the old energy to sing it as well as I once did.” He told her and smiled weakly.

Eurydice blinked slowly and replied, “I did not ask for your Chant. I asked for a song.” She crossed her arms over her knees and rested her head in the crook of her elbow, “Do Fereldens not have songs?”

“We have plenty; some better than others. Many tend to speak of mabari biting at Orlesian heels and casting them out of the lands but…” Cullen rubbed his jaw in thought, “…there are a few I recall my mother would sing at my bedside when I was young.”

“Would you sing one? If you want to. I’d listen.”

Cullen bit the inside of his cheek, uncertain of his ability and memory, but then the words came out and he found that he sang every single one as sincerely as he could:

 _“I once had a true love and I loved her so well_  
I loved her far better than my tongue can tell  
And I thought that she whispered to me and did say  
“It will not be long, love, ‘til our wedding day”

 _I dreamt last night that my true love came in_  
So softly she entered that her feet made no din  
And I dreamt that she whispered to me and did say  
“It will not be long, love, 'til our wedding day  
It will not be long, love, 'til our wedding day"”

It did not occur to either of them that they might have been or that the sight of the Commander singing so kindly to his Inquisitor would be odd, if not laughable. His voice rang out across the ancient stones and through the old, damp foundation, and it didn’t much matter to him that the ghosts or the recruits could hear him. It was Eurydice the song was for, natural as it had been to say the lyrics and not put together what they might mean when strung together.

He was staring up at the sky, scanning from star to star, when he heard her speak again.

“You have a pretty voice…”

Cullen felt his heart leap into his throat and laughed to hide the fact that he was choking on it, “I would not call it ‘pretty’, Inquisitor.” Overbearing, maybe. Nice. Pleasant, even. ‘Pretty’ was not a word he had ever thought to call himself.

Eurydice clicked her tongue, “I would and I did. You have a pretty voice. I like it.” She sat up a little and sang, “ _I once had a true love and I loved her so well_ …” Then her voice broke and faded away, stopping as she looked down at her fidgeting fingers, “I do not sing it as pretty as you. I am not meant for songs.”

Cullen regarded her with a soft and adoring look, “I think you sing just fine, Eurydice.”

“ _Eu-ry-di-ce_. You make my name into a song. I like that, too.” She said quietly and he saw how her ears fluttered just a bit and her eyes brighten even the dark of the night and he thought, oh how he thought, that he’d do anything to see her smile just once.

“Will you sing me another song?” She asked.

“If you I do will you teach me your song? The one you were singing before?”

If she had said ‘no’, he would have understood and respected it. He would go off on his own, trying to remember the little melody she spun out randomly, following after her voice and losing it in his sleep. But she moved her legs and leaned over the ruined stone between them and touched his hand. And when she did, he couldn’t help but feel his heartache again when she whispered, “Yes.”


End file.
